Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) remarks about impeaching President Obama are still getting some buzz, days after Coburn claimed to believe there was “some intended violation of the law in this administration.” If you hit that button, you can see Senator Coburn make the comments in a Wednesday town hall meeting at the Muskogee Convention Center.
The remarks seemed to be coming from the senator in response to a question that we don’t hear asked in the video. But you get the idea that Tom Coburn was egged on to make the Obama impeachment statement near the end of the 70-minute meeting.
The senator first noted that impeachment isn’t something you take lightly. Coburn acknowledged that he doesn’t have the legal background to say if Obama’s purported gaffes rise to the standard of impeachable offenses.
But there’s a but.
Tom Coburn knows what his conservative, Republican audience in Muskogee would like to hear. And here’s the heart of his response: “I think there’s some intended violation of the law in this administration, but I also think there’s a ton of incompetence, of people who are making decisions…I don’t have the legal background to know if that rises to high crimes and misdemeanors, but I think they’re getting perilously close.”
The comments didn’t stay in Oklahoma. And the buzz about a possible Obama impeachment sparked a response from former Obama White House adviser David Axelrod.
Speaking to MSNCB’s Morning Joe program, Axelrod impatiently brushed off the remarks as “plainly absurd” pandering that represented “a kind of virus that’s infected our politics.”
If you watched the video, you know that Tom Coburn claimed President Obama was a personal friend. Axelrod wasn’t happy:
“Can you imagine when he talks about people he doesn’t like? This is his friend…There is no constitutional premise for [impeachment]. That is pandering to the base…”
Axelrod seemed to suggest that Tom Coburn wasn’t serious about the Obama impeachment remarks. The senator was just firing up the conservative voters in Oklahoma.
[Tom Coburn & President Obama photo by Office of Tom Coburn] [Tom Coburn thumbnail photo credit: Talk Radio News Service via photopin cc ]
